I have often had conversations with business owners who use variations of the same, but “we cant afford to….”  theme

• We cant possibly afford to provide a warranty
• We cant afford to provide  delivery services
• We are only a small company, we cant possibly afford to create a customer friendly  environment
• We cant possibly afford to just give a one-to-one exchange  even though hes only bought it for 2 weeks.

It is a little frustrating because  most of them do not consider the cost of NOT doing it .

Lets take a hypothetical situation, a customer  purchases a high ticket  electronic item and is very happy with teh performance. It stops working after 2 weeks through no fault of his own and he brings it in to the service center. The service center gives him the go-around , We need to ascertain the cause, we need to ship the parts in from  The US, we cant ship in just one piece so you should wait for our next shipment..   and the customer gets a replacement 6 months later.

The question is, what is the COST to the company, of this initially satisfied customer, to have him  tell everyone he meets about the bad service and the  long wait, about never buying the brand again, about a zero lifetime value from the customer and his network  for not just the brand  but the company as well.

Given this day and age where bad news travels at the speed of thought on the internet,  it just takes a few people to chip in to create a maelstrom of  discontentment that can cripple brands and small companies.